


A Measure of Grace

by hapakitsune



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Religion, Religious Content, Religious Guilt, honestly any tag with "religion" or "religious" in it probably applies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 04:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12740988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapakitsune/pseuds/hapakitsune
Summary: grace,noun: the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it.





	A Measure of Grace

**Author's Note:**

> I do not have much of a religious background, and I especially do not have much experience with Catholicism aside from weddings and funerals; nevertheless I am extremely fascinated with how Marcus navigates his faith in this show, and I was interested to explore that for him and Tomas. No priest boning; maybe later.

After every exorcism came a moment of silence, and in that silence was grace. 

Tomas craved that moment when the sense of God’s love that flowed through him. Marcus did too, even if he hid it beneath sarcasm and dire predictions. The tension that pulled Marcus tight into the weapon he was would loosen; he might even smile. Tomas spent most of his time on the knife’s edge of frustration and desperation when it came to Marcus, and those moments where Marcus would smile at him, when his voice would soften on his name— _Tomas_ —were precious to him. 

Marcus exhaled in the breathless quiet of the room as on the bed, the young man relaxed into the mattress, the pain draining from his face until there was no trace of possession left. Tomas leaned forward to brush the boy’s hair from his eyes, checked his pupils for responsiveness, then went to the door to call in the young man’s partner. 

They left a little after that, politely declining the offer of tea and money. Marcus drove; Tomas gazed out the window, exhausted eyes hardly taking in the passing landscape of California forest. It felt as though it should be night; but no, it was only just past midday and the morning fog was gone, leaving the sun unobscured as it shone down upon them. Tomas closed his eyes and breathed in its warmth. 

Back at their motel room, they went about their routines in silence. Marcus washed up in the tiny bathroom, took inventory of their supplies, wrote notes in the pages of his bible. Tomas prayed, rinsed his face, removed his collar, stared at his reflection as if he could see the tendrils of corruption twisting through him if he looked hard enough. 

“You’ve been quiet,” Marcus said when Tomas returned from the bathroom. He was sitting atop one of the beds, reclined with one arm behind his head. His sharp gaze flicked over Tomas, brisk and professional. His voice was low, rumbling through Tomas like thunder, warming him as it always did. “Is everything all right in that head of yours?”

“You’ve been quiet too,” Tomas countered. He immediately felt like a schoolboy, returning a playground taunt with, _No, you!_ “It’s fine. That case was just…” He trailed off, unsure of how to finish.

“Was it difficult for you?” Marcus asked, tone casual enough that it was difficult to tell if he were leading into affirmation or censure. “They were not fond of you, I could tell.”

“They were not fond of what I am,” Tomas said. They had only reluctantly let Tomas in after they had seen his collar; they had not been told that they were being sent a priest. The young man they had helped had scars across his arms, much like the ones Marcus wore, only fresh. He had shrunk from Tomas and his collar, wary until Marcus had explained that the were not there to take him away. 

“They wanted to _fix_ me,” the young man had said, and Marcus, he of the biting remarks, had knelt before him and said, “There is nothing about you that needs to be fixed.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it,” Marcus said. “Helping people who have already been betrayed by the Church.”

Tomas nodded, grateful that Marcus had the words for it. “And for him, it will be always be hard,” he said. “He has spent so much of his life being told that there is something wrong with him.”

“Being queer didn’t invite the demon into him,” Marcus said. 

“I know that,” Tomas said. “I just hope he does as well.”

Marcus tilted his head, still watching Tomas with that sharp gaze. “We can check in on them later, if you like. Reassure them that this can happen to just about anyone.”

“I don’t know that _that_ would help,” Tomas said. Marcus grinned, and something inside Tomas’s chest loosened at the sight of it. “It just made me angry, is all, to see what had been done to him. I don’t like feeling this way.”

“Would you like me to hear your confession?” Marcus asked. “I may not wear the collar anymore, but I think I remember how it goes.”

“No,” Tomas said. “Although—I have not been to confession in eight months? Nine, maybe?” He looked to Marcus. “When was the last time you went to confession?”

“Oh, long enough that I can’t recall,” Marcus said. Tomas wasn’t sure that he believed him; but then Marcus always carried himself with the absolute conviction of his actions, so perhaps he was telling the truth. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” Tomas said. 

 

The truth was that Tomas worried that he had become an exorcist for the wrong reasons. He wanted to help people, yes; he wanted to do God’s work, yes; but more than any of that he craved the moments when Marcus would look at him and smile. He desired Marcus’s praise and approval more than he wanted to admit to himself, but then, there was a reason the demon in Angela Rance had come to him wearing Marcus’s face. The demon had known, had _seen_ inside him to where that pathetic, lonely part of him yearned for the slightest scrap of affection.

Jessica he had loved first for the possibility she represented, then for the glimpse of what might have been. Perhaps he had needed that to understand God’s will. He did not miss her. He was surprised that he didn’t, and thought perhaps he should have. If he had loved her true, perhaps it would not have felt so wrong to be with her.

Marcus was an entirely different problem. Tomas wrestled with it every night when sleep stole away his carefully built defenses and he was thrust headlong into dreams. 

It was not that Marcus was a man; Tomas felt strongly that love was not so easily constrained by something as simple as gender. It was that Tomas was pledged to the Church, and it was that Marcus was his mentor, his teacher. Wanting Marcus was an impossible situation. 

And yet he wanted. 

 

Marcus liked to go for runs in the morning. Sometimes Tomas would go with him. The morning after their exorcism in San Francisco, Marcus was up earlier than usual, stretching his arms out. Tomas watched him from bed without moving, staring at the play of Marcus’s lean muscles. There was a tattoo on his shoulder, a strange scratchy-looking thing that Tomas longed to get a closer look at. It was an odd thing to see on a priest. Tomas imagined Marcus at eighteen, before he took his vows, out somewhere in London full of rebellion and vigor, lying beneath a tattoo gun with all the bravado he carried when facing down a demon. 

“Stop staring,” Marcus said. Tomas startled and met Marcus’s amused gaze. “Or keep staring. I suppose I’m fine either way.”

“I didn’t mean—” Tomas started, his face heating. Marcus waved a dismissive hand. 

“Don’t,” he said. “When I get back, breakfast, and then visiting our recently un-possessed friend?”

“Okay,” Tomas said, and he waited until Marcus was safely out the door to creep into the bathroom for a freezing shower.

The two young men—Brandon and Filip—welcomed them with tentative smiles. “Father,” Filip, the boyfriend, said. “Mr. Keane. Come in.”

Their apartment was small, a studio with a wall put up to give the bedroom some privacy. They drank coffee at the kitchen table—the only table—sitting so close that Tomas’s arm brushed Marcus’s every time he lifted his cup. Brandon was still pale and drawn, though his eyes were no longer sunken, and he had clearly taken a shower after they’d left the previous day. He was a handsome man, young, with clear hazel eyes and sandy hair. The demon had turned him sallow and twisted, his smile tortured rather than the gentle one he gave to them now. 

“I’m glad you came by,” Brandon said. “I wanted to thank you, but you left so quickly yesterday.” He lifted his coffee, and the sleeve of his sweater fell down his arm, revealing his bandaged forearm from where the demon had made him cut into his flesh. “I know I reacted poorly when you first arrived, and I wanted to apologize for that.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Tomas said. “You have every right to be skeptical.”

“You had every right to hate us,” Marcus said. “Lord knows I would, were I in your shoes.”

Brandon looked down at his mug. His fingers were drumming restlessly along the edge; his nails were bitten down to the quick. “I used to be religious, you know,” he said. “Not just because my parents wanted me to be, but because I believed. Even when I left home and started to realize I was gay, I still went to church every week. And then—” He blinked, shook his head violently before looking up to them. “Mr. Keane, you said you’re no longer with the church.”

“Call me Marcus,” Marcus said. “And yes, that’s correct.”

“And yet you believe,” Brandon said. 

“God is not the Church,” Marcus said. “The people who do his will here on earth are just that—people, in all their imperfections. They can be wrong. They can be misguided. They were with you.”

“So you don’t believe that I’m—that I’m forsaken?” Brandon asked. “For being gay?”

Marcus smiled slightly, gaze cutting briefly to Tomas before flicking back to Brandon. “It would be a little hypocritical of me to do so.”

Tomas’s stomach jumped. He took his hand off the table to hide how his fingers were starting to shake. “The demon didn’t choose you because of who you love,” Tomas said, amazed by how steady his voice was. “If anything, it was because people tried to make you ashamed of it.”

“Strong emotions,” Filiip said, speaking for the first time since they had arrived. He was like a shadow to his boyfriend, dark where Brandon was light, with watchful eyes and a lithe, graceful way of moving. “That’s what you said. They look for people who are in pain.”

“Yes,” Marcus said. “That’s true.” He looked to Brandon again, his expression soft. When he spoke, it was gentle. “But you are not to blame. It is hard, but you survived, and nothing can take that away from you. You are stronger than you know.”

Brandon blinked rapidly before smiling. “Thank you,” he said, and he reached out to take Marcus’s hand. Tomas’s chest tightened at the sight, at the way Marcus smiled kindly at Brandon. 

“Will you take my confession?” Brandon asked Marcus, who looked at Tomas quickly before nodding, and they went together into the small bedroom. Filip offered Tomas more coffee and they talked of nothing until Brandon and Marcus returned. Brandon seemed lighter in his step, quicker to smile. The tension went out of Filip like the air from a balloon; Tomas hadn’t even realized he was worried. 

“Better?” Filip asked.

“Yes,” Brandon said. He sounded as though he believed it. 

 

“You’re being quiet again,” Marcus said as they were drove back to their motel. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong? Is it more of those visions?”

“No,” Toms said. “No visions.” He bit the inside of his lip, then turned decisively and said, “I am simply thinking about what you said to Brandon about the Church.”

“Which part?”

“That God is not the Church,” Tomas said. “I don’t think you’re wrong. But it is something that I never truly thought about before I met you.”

The car was silent as Marcus glanced over at him, brow furrowed. Tomas swallowed the urge to say something to fill the silence; he could see Marcus thinking. He had learned the signs of that by now.

“I spent nearly my entire life in the Church,” Marcus said after a moment. “It was how I made sense of the world. I knew my place, I knew the boundaries of my world—and I had faith. I never dreamed of what I would do if I left. There was no contingency plan for me. I expected to die in the arms of the Church. Who would I be, after all, without the Church? Without my faith?

“During the Rance case I realized that my faith was not contingent on the structure of the Church. I dedicated thirty years of my life to serving the Church and Rome, and it took being excommunicated for me to understand that the Church is a vessel to understand His grace. I do not need the Church to serve God. Perhaps you do; and that’s all right. We are all called to His service in the manner best suited to our abilities.”

“Yours is exorcism,” Tomas said. 

“And yours,” Marcus said. “Although from what I saw, you are a good priest as well. You led your congregation even when your conviction wavered.”

“It was the Church that made me doubt my faith, not God,” Tomas said. “I think you are right. We are imperfect instruments of God’s will. To place everything in the Church, as I once did—it’s blind. I can’t believe it took me so long to see it.”

“It’s hard,” Marcus said. “I followed the dictates of my vows for forty years before they cast me out. I’m only now starting to let myself see that it must be God’s will, and that I serve that will better now than when I was constrained by the Church. Given what we know of the Church’s current state, perhaps that was even necessary.”

“And you believe that, truly?”

“I have faith,” Marcus said. 

Tomas smiled and looked at his hands. “About the other thing you said to them, that it would be hypocritical of you to believe them forsaken.”

Marcus’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, but his tone remained as neutral as ever when he said, “Yes.”

“It was good of you to say,” Tomas said. 

“I suppose,” Marcus said. “Perhaps a little self-serving.” He pulled into their motel’s parking lot and threw the car into park. “It doesn’t bother you?”  
stm  
“It would,” Tomas said, his heart rattling in his chest, “be hypocritical of me if it did.”

Marcus stopped as he was reaching for the door. “Would it.”

“I have had thoughts,” Tomas said. The smell of wood polish and incense hung in the air. He closed his eyes. “I have had impure thoughts about men. About—you.”

Marcus was silent, and that silence stretched on until Tomas could no longer bear it. He groped blindly for the door handle and flung himself out, stumbling towards the building. He heard the car door slam behind him, but he didn’t look around, not wanting to see Marcus’s face. Not now. 

“Tomas,” Marcus called. Tomas ignored him, fumbling his keycard from his pocket and going to their room. “Tomas!”

He had the door open, was just barely inside when Marcus caught up to him. Tomas stumbled, his back pressed to the door, as Marcus approached him. His breaths came quickly as he looked around for somewhere to fix his gaze other than Marcus’s eyes, but as ever he was drawn back. 

“Tomas,” Marcus said. “It’s all right. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Tomas bit out. “I’m _angry_. I kept my vows for years until—until Jessica. And when I recommitted myself, when I had sworn to uphold my vows properly, there was you. And you were always there.” 

“Is that what you’re afraid of?” Marcus said. He came inexorably closer, until their breath mingled in the air between them and Tomas could feel his proximity on his skin. “That you are human and that you have human desires?”

“I fear losing my tether to my faith,” Tomas said. “I’m not like you. I need the Church, I need my vows.”

“You are chosen,” Marcus said. “Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”

“It is pointless, anyway,” Tomas said, barely listening. “I suppose it’s a crush, like any other. It will pass.”

“I would never ask you to break your vows for me,” Marcus said. “But you should know that your affection is not…unrequited.”

Tomas snapped to attention at that, searching Marcus for any sign of mockery. But of course there wasn’t; he wouldn’t tease about this, for all that he flirted and teased at nearly every other opportunity. But he had never sought to humiliate Tomas, just humble him at times. “It isn’t?”

“No,” Marcus said. 

Tomas found himself resting his hand against Marcus’s chest, feeling the gentle rise and fall from his breaths. “You never said a word.”

“Neither did you, until now.” Marcus didn’t move, even as Tomas turned his hand so his fingers spread over the span of his breast. “What is it you want, Tomas?”

“I want you,” Tomas said—whispered, really. “I shouldn’t.” Then he clutched Marcus’s shirt in his hand and pulled him in for a kiss. 

Marcus was not a practiced kisser, but it didn’t matter. Tomas wanted him in all his imperfection. The rough brush of his mustache against Tomas’s lip, the hesitant way Marcus returned the kiss at first before responding with enthusiasm, all of it was perfect and necessary. Tomas had to force himself back, had to consciously focus to unclench his hand and step back. Marcus’s eyes were wide and astonished; Tomas had caused that. 

“Tell me,” Tomas said. “Tell me how this serves God’s will.”

Marcus placed his hands on either side of Tomas’s face; he had rough palms, but a gentle touch. “If God did not want this,” he said, “He would not have brought you to me.”

“You speak as though it is inevitable,” Tomas said, voice coming out hoarse. 

“Oh, Tomas,” Marcus said. His gaze was fond, soft wrinkles around his eyes hinting at a smile. “The moment you walked into my room at St. Aquinas, I was lost.”

It was unbearable. Tomas surged forward to kiss him again, clinging to him as they kissed, and kissed, until they were trembling in each other’s arms. Marcus ducked his head, almost shyly, as he said, “I am not, ah, well-versed in these matters. You may have to take the lead.”

“I can, if you’d like,” Tomas said. “Perhaps not now, though?”

“Perhaps,” Marcus said, and he kissed Tomas again. When they parted they were both breathless and smiling like fools. Tomas pressed his thumb to the corner of Marcus’s mouth, marveling in how impossible it had seemed just a day ago to win one of those smiles. _Grace_ , he thought.

“What?” Marcus asked. 

“Nothing,” Tomas said. “Just a passing thought.”


End file.
